FIRST PERSON

FIRST PERSON; A Carnivore's Best Friend

By PATRICK J. McCLOSKEY

Published: December 2, 2001

SEVERAL times during my 10 years as a waiter at Peter Luger Steak House in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Sol Forman, the restaurant's longtime owner, urged me to try his world-famous porterhouse.

Although I was a chronic vegetarian, I wondered whether the secret to prosperity and longevity had something to do with eating steak every day. After all, Mr. Foreman, who died on Thanksgiving, did so for most of his 98 years and continued to oversee one of the nation's most successful dining spots until two weeks before his death.

The restaurant was established in 1887 by Peter Luger, a German immigrant, and ever since Mr. Forman took it over in 1950, he had the foresight to maintain its 19th-century character into the 21st. Many of the oak tables were there at the beginning, as it seems were some of the older waiters, and the menu evolved at about the same pace as the Roman Catholic Church deals with dogma. Perhaps, Peter Luger's will hire its first female waiter when women are ordained as priests.

My first encounter with Mr. Forman came shortly after I'd been hired by his daughter Marilyn Spiera, when he was a middle-aged man of only 87. All the waiters had other duties, and mine meant arriving early on Saturday mornings to sharpen the steak knives.

One Monday afternoon, Mr. Forman called me over to his usual table by the kitchen and pointed out that his knife was not nearly sharp enough. I made the mistake of trying to explain that perhaps that particular utensil was in the dishwasher when I collected the knives for sharpening. Mr. Forman's thin, waxed mustache wiggled slightly and seemed to brush aside my excuse-making.

''Would you like me to assign the task to someone else?'' he asked politely as ever.

Fortunately, as my eyes took in his impeccably tailored suit, I realized that his soft-spoken voice and diminutive frame sheathed a business acumen far sharper than any blade I could grind downstairs.

At first I felt miffed, but later I was thankful that, unlike most restaurant owners I'd met, he had not flown into a murderous rage.

Anyone who has ever eaten at Peter Luger's knows that the customers are not exactly pampered. I was astounded at the nightly crush of clients -- from 400 to 800 regardless of the weather or the economy -- representing every imaginable occupation and country of origin, elbowing each other at the bar as they waited up to an hour for a reserved table.

Meanwhile, we waiters jostled our way through the crowd, accidentally bumping more that a few heads with our serving trays balanced precariously overhead and laden with platters of sizzling steak and hash brown potatoes.

Once I overheard a woman, obviously on her first visit and dressed for a romantic evening, yell at her boyfriend as he tried to order her a Diet Coke from five rows of packed customers removed from the bar, ''This isn't a restaurant; it's a subway stop!''

I felt like informing her that she was confused about who, at Peter Luger's, waits on who.

Most customers, however, love the good-natured frenzy. After setting objective standards for service, Mr. Forman had the wisdom to leave us waiters alone. Instead of the stiffly precise style of formal establishments, we were encouraged to inject our personalities into our dealings with patrons.

Occasionally, the results were disastrous, like the evening an ex-heavyweight contender loudly threatened, two dozen times, to put a waiter's head through the wood-paneled walls in response to a remark he considered insulting. For the most part, however, each waiter developed a following of regular clients. Many became my friends.

One of them, Honey Tillinger, recently recounted her first visit to Peter Luger's in 1937, the night before she was born. Her father took his very pregnant wife out for a steak just before she went into labor. Ms. Tillinger has eaten at Peter Luger's since childhood and went there for dinner before she gave birth to her own daughter.

I often waited on three generations of her family as they gathered on Sundays. It was not unusual to see Mr. Forman doting over his grandchildren at the next table. I may have warned the youngest one about the knives and half-scowled, ''I'm in no mood to count fingers.''

I never did taste the steak at Peter Luger's before I left to become a journalist. But there are times I miss the smell of grease and the roar of the antique ovens, not to mention Sol Forman's commitment to do one thing very, very well.

Photo: The restaurant's character endures. (Peter Luger Steak House)

Patrick J. McCloskey is writing a book for Random House about inner-city Catholic education.